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The House of Representatives passed an amended version of the "bailout" bill on Friday -- a bill that is now over 450 pages in length (as opposed to three pages when it was first presented by the Treasury Secretary) and includes a staggering $100 billion+ in targeted special-interest tax breaks and pork barrel spending.

As I said before, this bill is our 9% confidence Congress at its worst. It gives Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, whose monumental misjudgments in part kept us from addressing the problem sooner, an unprecedented amount of unchecked power. There are compelling arguments why it could fail spectacularly, just like Hoover's depression-proofing plans did in 1930. And really -- if we are on the brink of disaster, how in God's name can we afford all this new government spending? My feeling, obviously, is that we are not at the brink of disaster, and that the current crisis was manufactured -- after years of Democrat stalling and opposing any measure that would reign in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- solely to justify the biggest government power grab in my lifetime.

And again following what I wrote in an earlier blog post, the bill still completely fails to address the underlying cause of the problem -- the ever-increasing number of loans that banks were forced to make to un-creditworthy borrowers. But in an effort to sugar-coat that critical defect, the "bailout" bill increased the FDIC insurance limit on bank deposits from $100,000 to $250,000, and was further amended to include a mandate requiring health insurance coverage "parity" between psychotherapy and treatment of mental disorders, and physical therapy and treatment of physical disorders. Neither of these things are bad (they are both good, actually) but they do not make up for this fundamental shortcoming.

Actually,
the thinking behind the push for "parity" and the now-questionable
decades-long push to extend mortgages to "underserved" groups seems
eerily parallel: 1) Stodgy/greedy old bankers say they can't afford to lend to minorities who don't meet traditional mortgage criteria. But we have a noble social goal to fulfill and we know they're wrong! ... 2) Stodgy/greedy
old health plan administrators say they can't afford to cover
hard-to-diagnose mental problems (e.g., anxiety) and substance abuse to
the same extent that they cover easy-to-diagnose physical problems. But
we have a noble social goal and ....

The article, written by Steve Malanga, to which Kaus links with respect to the "noble social goal" of loans for low income and minority borrowers, is so good that I'm going to excerpt it at length:

In the early 1990s I attended a conference designed to teach
journalists the tools of an emerging field known as computer-assisted
investigative reporting. One of the hottest sessions of the conference
explained how journalists could replicate stories that other papers had
done locally using computer tools, including one especially popular
project to determine if banks in your community were discriminating
against minority borrowers in making mortgages. One newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, had already won a Pulitzer Prize for its computer-assisted series on the subject, and others, including the Washington Post and the Detroit Free Press,
had also weighed in with their own analysis based on government loan
data. Everyone sounded keen to learn if their local banks were guilty,
too.

Although academic researchers leveled substantial criticisms against
these newspaper efforts (namely, that they relied on incomplete data
and did not take into account lower savings rates, higher debt levels,
and higher loan defaults rates for many minority borrowers), bank
lending to minority borrowers still became an enormous issue—mostly
because newspaper reporters and editors in this pre-talk radio,
pre-blogging era were determined to make it so. Editorialists called
for the government to force banks to end the alleged discrimination,
and they castigated federal banking regulators who said they saw no
proof of wrongdoing in the data.

... One economist for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. who looked
more deeply into the data, for instance, found that the difference in
denial rates on loans for whites and minorities could be accounted for
by such factors as higher rates of delinquencies on prior loans for
minorities, or the inability of lenders to verify information provided
to them by some minority applicants.

Ignoring the import of such data, federal officials went on a
campaign to encourage banks to lower their lending standards in order
to make more minority loans. One result of this campaign is a
remarkable document produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in
1998 titled “Closing the Gap: A Guide to Equal Opportunity Lending”.

Quoting from a study which declared that “underwriting
guidelines…may be unintentionally racially biased,” the Boston Fed then
called for what amounted to undermining many of the lending criteria
that banks had used for decades. It told banks they should consider
junking the industry’s traditional debt-to-income ratio, which lenders
used to determine whether an applicant’s income was sufficient to cover
housing costs plus loan payments. It instructed banks that an
applicant’s “lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative
factor” in obtaining a mortgage, even though a mortgage is the biggest
financial obligation most individuals will undertake in life. In cases
where applicants had bad credit (as opposed to no credit), the Boston
Fed told banks to “consider extenuating circumstances” that might still
make the borrower creditworthy. When applicants didn’t have enough
savings to make a down payment, the Boston Fed urged banks to allow
loans from nonprofits or government assistance agencies to count toward
a down payment, even though banks had traditionally disallowed such
sources because applicants who have little of their own savings
invested in a home are more likely to walk away from a loan when they
have trouble paying. (emphasis added)

Of course, the new federal standards couldn’t just apply to
minorities. If they could pay back loans under these terms, then so
could the majority of loan applicants. Quickly, in other words, these
became the new standards in the industry. [Perhaps this is where one could make the case for corporate greed among lending institutions and bond traders. -ed] In 1999, the New York Times
reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were easing credit
requirements for mortgages it purchased from lenders, and as the
housing market boomed, banks embraced these new standards with a
vengeance. Between 2004 and 2007, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became the
biggest purchasers of subprime mortgages from all kinds of applicants,
white and minority, and most of these loans were based on the lending
standards promoted by the government.

Meanwhile, those who raced to make these mortgages were lionized.
Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies even invited
Angelo Mozilo, CEO of the lender which made more loans purchased by
Fannie and Freddie than anyone else, Countrywide Financial, to give its
prestigious 2003 Dunlop Lecture on the subject of "The American Dream
of Homeownership: From Cliché to Mission.” A brief, innocuous
description of the event still exists online here.

Of course Mozilo is now the disgraced former CEO of Countrywide, who resigned after it was discovered that he not only massaged his company's books in order to pay himself and his cronies undeserved bonuses, but he also gave sweetheart mortgage deals to influential members of Congress.

The hero worship of Mozilo reminded me of the way that Franklin Raines, former OMB director under Bill Clinton and former CEO of Fannie Mae, was praised for his "outstanding leadership" by Rep. Maxine Waters in 2004. The criterion for her lavish compliment? "The GSE's have exceeded their housing goals." Apparently it didn't matter one whit to Rep. Waters that Raines' accounting shenanigans caused Fannie Mae to eat nearly $10 billion, or that he received at least $50 million in undeserved bonuses -- none of which has he ever offered to pay back, or give to his precious struggling low-income mortgage-holders.

Unfortunately, such irresponsibility is often part of the whirlwind of populism that accompanies broad-based "we're helping the little guy and sticking it to the system and everyone knows we're doing the right thing" policy efforts. And in the case of loans for minorities and low-income borrowers, a crusade against "racial discrimination" became the primary motivator. And no one -- NO ONE -- dares to challenge a crusade against "racial discrimination" because any such challenge would be labeled a de facto case of racism. Because if you want a career as a civic leader or politician, or if you want your business to be successful or have a non-adversarial relationship with the government, then you will avoid being smeared as a racist at all costs, even if it means the abdication of common sense.

So far, only one Democrat has admitted his party's failure to objectively study the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And characteristically, the Democrat leadership has announced, in completely unambiguous terms, that they bear absolutely no responsibility for the current banking mess. Their willingness to lie about this issue is surpassed perhaps only by the willingness of Republicans to say anything or sign anything in order to avoid being labeled as "racists."

And guess who's left paying the bill? That's right -- us. The American taxpayer. We will pay for it through outright taxation. We will pay for it through higher mortgage fees, higher interest rates, and less available credit. And really -- is anyone expecting this $700 billion to actually "fix" the problem? Of course not. This bill only sets a precedent for request after request after request for bailouts to come. Joe Biden is already talking about giving courts the power to reset the principal amount for mortgage loans. What kind of financial insanity will be next?

Elizabeth Scalia, "The Anchoress," is by far my favorite Christian blogger. Over the past few weeks, she has been praying and fasting. Really doing it. Really. She had this to say a few days ago:

My prayer is not for victory. It is for the
very best outcome for the country, and for God’s will to be done. Our
ways are not God’s way, nor our minds God’s mind. To us, the “best”
outcome might seem obvious, but really, when you think about it, when
does God ever do the “obvious” thing?

... I’m thinking we’re in the middle of a mystery, that this whole, odd,
unpredictable and too-long election season has been run along one of
those threads connecting things seen and unseen, and we are so
disoriented today that we do not really know which outcome is the
outcome pleasing to God, and meant - by Him - to draw us into Himself.

The Holy Spirit, of course, uses whatever He chooses, to bring
things about. Who knows if we are meant to be shaken, soundly, in order
to be roused from our complacency and the status quo?

The sense I have is that the status quo won’t do any longer. That we
are stagnant, too deeply comfortable in too much of the muck and mud of
materialism, and we’ve lost sight of what and who we are meant to cling
to.

So, let us not worry. Let us not wring our hands. For the Christian,
anyway, I believe we are in a moment where the rubber meets the road.
How do you respond to that? With trust that no matter what things seem
like, that “all things work for good and to the Glory of God” or with wringing hands, depression and doubt?

If you are doubting…if you are thinking that only electoral victory
- as defined by the world - will be a validation of either the
existence of God, or His Intent, then you need to hunker down into
scripture and get out of your own head. Do you believe that Christ is
the Son of God, or do you not? If you do, do you really think that this
election is all there is, and that a loss here is somehow static, and
works to nothing in God’s purpose?

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under the heaven.

You either believe that, or you don’t.

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

You either believe it, or you don’t.

But if you’re calling yourself a Christian, and you’re not believing it, then question what you say you believe.

I'm going to close this post by saying that over the last few months, God has been steadily dealing with me over the subjects of materialism and money. Without going into a lot of details, my immediate future contains a disturbing amount of uncertainty, and like all of us, my first reaction is to worry obsessively over how all the bills are going to get paid. I don't solicit prayers for myself very often on this blog (perhaps I should do it more often!) but the events of the past week have made it abundantly clear to me that my previous faith in financial systems and markets and government was grievously misplaced. Please don't misunderstand -- I'm not giving up on hard work or sound investing, or throwing everything I have to the wind and hoping for some far-out miracle. But now I realize how much I should have been trusting God rather than relying on my own skill and luck. Please pray for a spiritual transformation that gives me the strength to place everything in God's hands first.

I had no idea how deeply my hate for that man ran. My lack of an
interaction, with a "W" supporter is still haunting me a couple of hours
later.

I was on my home and was on the ramp getting off the
highway. I saw a mini-van on the side of the road. There was a lady
standing next to the van and in her arms she held her child. I can only
assume her mini-van had broken down. I don't know, perhaps with so many
gad stations being out of gas, she had also run out. I slowed down and
started to pull over to offer her a ride. At the very last second I
noticed a "W" sticker on the back of her vehicle and I sped up and
drove off.

I feel really bad as a human being. That child is
not responsible for their parent's belief system. They are innocent and
do not deserve to be out in the heat. (It is warm but not so bad that
they would even break a sweat) I try not to punish people for what they
believe.

On the other hand, so many hateful thoughts went
through my head. I wondered how a person could see what was going on in
NO and still have one of those awful stickers on their car. How could
they support an awful excuse for a human being that has let our country
down and is letting Americans die after they have made it through the
storm? How can someone be so blind and so stupid?

I thought
that if she loves "W" so much, maybe he would come along and help her the
same way he is rescuing all of those poor people in the weather
stricken part of our country. Let's see what her hero can do for her.

I
never did go back. I was so upset with that sticker and with the fact
that someone would support an idiot who is so clearly running our
country into the ground.

So why am I writing this? It is not
to boast, I really feel bad about passing this child and not picking up
their mother. Perhaps it is for a catharsis of sorts? That would be an
educated guess. I suppose it is because I feel conflicted and I am
writing this to try and sort through what I am feeling. There are two
emotional sides, for me, on this incident and neither seems completely
right or wrong to me. Even writing this, I am still not able to work
through what happened. I feel like I am floating between right and
wrong and am unable to grab either side.

Thanks for listening.

I have to wonder if Demgurl's car is plastered with stickers that say
"Visualize World Peace," "Coexist," and "Who Would Jesus Bomb?"

But the reasoning behind this editorial is so convoluted that I am at a loss even to attempt a rational understanding of it. Consider just this brief excerpt:

... Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier
and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals
against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic
cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could
hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power
grabs.

... But Americans must be equally honest about the fact that
keeping troops in Iraq will only make things worse.

I can only attribute such twisted reasoning to axiomatic thinking, based on one of the core principles of leftist politics: the sole sources of evil in the world are Republicans and the US military.

This principle, one of the basic axioms that defines the leftist world view, is so rudimentary and fundamental that any attempt to question it or challenge it is heresy to militant leftists, in the same way that challenging the supremacy of Allah or the Trinity would be heresy to Muslims and Christians.

Anyone who attempts to challenge this principle is an evil-doer, and all such challenges are either the epitome of ignorance, or outright lies -- crimethink, in Orwell's 1984 vernacular.

The evil of the US military can be somewhat mitigated by electing a Democrat commander in chief. Such an action does not allow the US military to kill with impunity; rather, the end result is that we just don't talk about the killing. (How often do leftists and Democrats mention civilian casualties incurred as a result of the bombs and missiles that Bill Clinton rained on Serbia?)

But as long as a Republican commands the US military, the outcome can only be raw evil, so pure and horrific that even terrorism, murder, genocide, and ethnic cleansing pale in its shadow. It is the cesspool from which all depraved human activity emerges.

Such seems to be the reasoning of the Times editorial board.

And how do we put in end to this evil? Withdraw our military, put the UN in charge, and sponsor a series of multi-lateral negotiations asking the motley crew of thugs, terrorists, assassins, religious nuts, etc. killing each other over the remains of Iraq to please try and be nice to each other. Then, and only then, will a new era dawn in Iraq.

Those like myself who are a bit less optimistic expect only to see America's "evil" supplanted by an endless series of "unfortunate" and "regrettable" incidents perpetrated by "freedom fighters" and desperate "militias," who will promise to do better next time as long as the US keeps their bank accounts and armories full. (One word: Fatah. Google it.)

And when the blood of innocents flows too freely, there will always be a way to blame everything on the Republicans and the US military. Funny how things seem to work out that way for the Times.

"Half the harm that is done in this world is due to
people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm -- but the harm
does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they
are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves." -- T.S.
Eliot, 1950

Recently Michelle Malkin noted that a group of kooks is trying to end the 25-year tradition of Fleet Week in San Francisco, which features the Navy's Blue Angels flying team. The Blues perform a week of shows over San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge that draws nearly one million spectators and pumps millions into San Francisco's economy.

My father-in-law is a retired Naval aviator (A-3 Sky Warrior) and with the help of a friend he got VIP passes for my son and I to see the Blues with him last weekend at Tinker AFB here in Oklahoma City. If you've never seen a Blues show, here is a little of what you are missing:

It's the cynic in me, I know, but I just can't help but think that one of the major reasons behind the kook's hatred of the Blues is simply jealousy. Who wouldn't be envious of guys with the skill to do what the Blues do?

But I suppose that if you are chronically unhappy, you would be offended that the Blues are all male. You would be angered by the fact that they fly the FA-18 Hornet, one of the most versatile warplanes in the US air fleet. And you would be livid about the fact that millions of average Americans watch the Blues and are thrilled by what they see.

I disagree with those who equate military strength with divine favoritism and who seek to use our military to do the "will of God." But at the same time, I awe at the technological power and superiority and the teamwork required to pull off a show like the one performed by the Blues.

If there is one critical difference between us and terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and Hamas and Hezbollah, it is the fact that we are able to use our power to build and innovate and even to entertain, while our enemies can only envision power as a tool of domination and death.

Disclaimer: I didn't watch ABC's miniseries The Path To 9/11. I did watch about 30 minutes of it Sunday night, but I did not view the whole thing.

On the other hand, I did follow the controversy surrounding the miniseries with great curiosity. It seems the Democrats have suddenly discovered creative license, which has been a trademark of "historical" television shows and movies since the days of their inception. They also discovered that those who write the scripts for such entertainment often use sources that are somewhat controversial. History itself is controversial. Only the blandest of narratives usually passes without objection from one side or the other.

I found two conclusive statements about the miniseries that, for me, seemed to sum up what made the Democrats so angry.

From Rush Limbaugh:

Do
you realize none of what we got in The Path to 9/11 was what we got
throughout the 1990s? We had none of the staged good times of Bill
Clinton. None of the nineties in The Path to 9/11 were portrayed as
happy-go-lucky and carefree and a roaring economy and everybody just
happy as they can be. We didn't see any trembling lip performance from
Bill Clinton. They didn't use any of that video. We didn't see Clinton
mesmerizing an audience ... What we saw
in this movie was the real Bill Clinton: awkward, hesitating, unsure,
faking resolve, and that, folks, is the real story behind the story.
The image, the years of a crafted image has been laid bare for all who
watched The Path to 9/11 to see.

The one person who has no grounds for complaint is Bill Clinton himself.

"The Path to 9/11" gives the impression that, as president, Clinton
never took bin Laden's declaration of war against the United States and
the West seriously enough. And that is simply the unvarnished,
undeniable truth.

Still, even here "The Path to 9/11" gets it wrong. The real truth
about the failures of the U.S. government under both Clinton and Bush
is not, as "The Path to 9/11" would have it, that the diabolical nature
of the al Qaeda threat was obvious and unmistakable and that it was
ignored by fools, charlatans and other downright unpleasant people who
refused to listen to the Few Who Knew the Truth (meaning the late FBI
official John O'Neill and that legend in his own mind, former
counterterrorism official Richard Clarke).

The simple fact of the matter is that, with a million other things
going on all at once - all of which seemed more pressing at the time,
the threat went uncomprehended. (link added)

Hindsight is always 20/20. After 9/11, it was easy for anyone to look at the escalation of Islamic terrorism during the 1990's and conclude that we didn't do enough. But that is simply the risk of using a law enforcement approach to combat terrorism. No system is perfect of course -- Israel still suffers from random terrorism, and their system is probably the best in the world. But the caution traditionally associated with "innocent until proven guilty" obviously allows clever operatives to slip through the system. We have to decide if the risk posed by potential terrorists on the loose is greater than the risk posed by capturing or killing individuals without "absolute proof" of their intentions. Obviously the United States opted for the former until 9/11.

If this was indeed a fatal mistake, then we should learn from it and not try to pretend that it never happened.

In my opinion, the Democrats' gross over-reaction to a fictional TV miniseries can only damage them in the future. Even agenda-based celluloid crocks like Oliver Stone's Nixon and Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 failed to elicit threats of lawsuits and censorship from Republicans. Threatening ABC's broadcast license was probably the stupidest move that the Democrats could have made. This undoubtedly eroded an enormous amount of goodwill between broadcast television and the Democrats. And the chilling effect that would have resulted from ABC canceling the show could have been devastating to Hollywood.

Further, in their attempts to downplay the events portrayed in the film, former Clinton administration and Democrat party officials thoroughly savaged the official 9/11 Commission Report, which Democrats had previously been declared to be infallible, inerrant, and divinely inspired. In fact, a major 2004 Democrat campaign strategy attempted to portray the Bush Administration as lax with regard to fighting terrorism because the Bush Administration failed to reshape their entire foreign policy and terrorism strategies around the Commission's recommendations. But if the report is worthless, then maybe the Bush administration did the right thing.

9/11 is still near enough in the past for most of us to remember it vividly. Not just the horror of the terrorist acts themselves, but the reaction of Arabs and Muslims to news of the attacks. Their sheer joy at the suffering of Americans did not stem from emotions that surfaced only after Jan. 21, 2001. Animosity toward America has been building in the Middle East for forty years. The 1990's was a critical period during that time span. Woe to us if we forget that.

On today's show, Rush Limbaugh devoted a segment to the "Black State of the Union" speech delivered by Louis Farrakhan last Saturday at a forum organized by talk show host Tavis Smiley entitled "Prominent African-Americans and Development of the Black Agenda." Courtesy of Rush's website, here are some excerpts from Farrakhan's speech:

America
must be burned! America is no good at all. If you have made a promise
that you don't keep, what are you? You are a liar, a deceiver. All
right, now, did they promise the Native Americans? Did they write it in
treaties? Did they fulfill it? Did they promise us 40 acres and a mule?
Did they fulfill it? I could run the list down of promises made and
promises broken. The right to vote. You got it, but the minute they
gave it to you; they were finding ways to take it back from you. Can't
you open your eyes and see the house is burning?

... You can't make an agreement or covenant with black America when you have made an agreement with hell and a covenant with death...You
have good white people who want to see this covenant successful. But
you're not dealing with them when you dial up. When you sit down with
Bush, who are you dealing with? And do you have what it takes to deal
effectively with him? All you can do is petition. That's all you can
do. You sit and you confer, you talk, and you feel good. But the Bible
teaches you that we war not against flesh and blood. The white folk
that you have good relationship with, that's flesh and blood. They
don't have the power.

... This
is a government that the Founding Fathers said, whenever a government
fails to guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that
government either needs to be reformed or abolished. Now, when are you
going to stand up? Because you don't have the juice to reform it. It
has to be abolished and something new and better set in its place. You
all got to take your government back because it's been taken from you
by a group of smart, crooked industrialist bankers. (warning: eeeeevil Jewish conspiracy alert) You all know what
I'm talking about. But if you don't have the testicular fortitude to
say what needs to be said, then sit down and stop trying to say you
speak for our people and the hurt of the poor.

... Look
to God, look to yourself, break your covenant with hell and death, then
make a covenant with black America and let's help implement a road map
that will free us and the whites that will be free can be freed by
this. The Mexicans, the Hispanics can be freed by this road map. We are
a universal people. But those at the top, they're on their way to hell,
and if I've got any power, I want to push them into hell as fast as I
can.

There's more, but you get the idea: Bush is Satan, America is controlled by evil Jewish bankers, blacks are no better off than they were 50 or 100 years ago, and America must be destroyed and rebuilt in order for blacks to be free. Destroyed, as in burned. As in Armageddon.

Can we all agree that what Farrakhan said this weekend is much farther off the deep end than anything ever uttered by Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson? This man isn't just rebuking some podunk town in Pennsylvania; he wants to see America completely destroyed.

Yet the mainstream press, which convulsed for a week when Pat Robertson suggested bumping off Hugo Chavez, can't be bothered to publish even a single article in the Washington Post or the New York Times about Farrakhan's dreams of white man's annihilation. A quick news search turned up only one article in the Washington Times, which included some of Farrakhan's jabs at the Bush administration but omitted his references to Armageddon.

Can someone explain why Farrakhan seems immune to the same treatment meted out to the Falwells and Robertsons? After all, he is a "minister." Not only that, he is considered a 'leader' of black America. Funny, I seem to remember something about leadership and accountability being related.

And maybe someone would like to explain how this kind of rhetoric helps blacks or anyone else? Whether or not blacks are disadvantaged is no excuse for the kind of lunacy and propaganda that Farrakhan and his ilk spews year after year. Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, and others seem to spend the bulk of their efforts rehashing the failures of the past. They have no vision of a future where they are not in power. And they willfully destroy any black American who achieves success without cutting them in first.

One of Rush's callers accurately categorized Farrakhan's rantings as being equivalent to the kinds of things that one hears at a KKK rally - meaningless, divisive drivel, devoid of reason, and useful only for whipping up rage and hate and fear among its listeners.

It's sad and troubling to watch the leaders of the Democrat party let this kind of hatemongering go by without a single objection, because to them it is more important to keep 95% of the black vote in their pockets than to actually challenge this nonsense and work for true justice and respect among all Americans.

I know that as individuals, blacks aren't stupid. And they're not as easily-led as political leaders often judge them to be. Farrakhan was right about one thing -- this is the time for blacks to have testicular fortitude. But when they stand up, it is Farrakhan's hate-filled propaganda that they should push into hell first.

I've never seen the President angrier than he was this past weekend, after the NYT published its story, based on maliciously leaked information, about the National Security Agency's monitoring of overseas cell phone calls and emails from individuals with suspected ties to terrorism. Amazingly, this story was published at the same time the Democrats declared that they had "killed the Patriot Act." Here is probably the best summary and defense of the NSA program, written by Jed Babbin for The American Spectator.

Apparently these events lit a fire under the President, for his Sunday night speech and Monday press conference were given by a man emboldened with a sense of purpose and determination rarely seen in the White House. Perhaps, finally, President Bush understands that the Democrats and their media house organ, the New York Times, are engaged in full-scale warfare with the Republican party, and that their only goal is to damage the Republican party thoroughly enough to win back control of Congress and the White House -- all else, including our safety, be damned. Maybe he finally gets it. And maybe he will fight them as he should have been fighting them since his re-election.

The Democrats seemed caught totally off guard by Bush's fiery response, particularly his insistence that top leaders of both parties were briefed on the NSA communications intercepts a dozen times, and had never called on the Administration to curtail its activities.

The best the Democrats could come up with was the Sgt. Schultz defense -- "We knew nothing!! N-n-n-othing!!!" But in their haste to plead ignorance or claim that the eeeevil Darth Cheney "misled" them, they apparently left a number of holes in their story. And of course they have set themselves up to do some serious explaining during next year's elections - if they are this easily and continually "misled" by the dumbest man ever to inhabit the White House, then how are they going to deal with truly calculating and evil people like the Iranians and the North Koreans?

(Now Sen. Jay Rockefeller has honestly admitted "I'm stupid!" in a facsimile of a conveniently hand-written letter addressed to Vice President Cheney over two years ago. Frankly, I'd be highly suspicious of any Democrat "memos" that suddenly appear in the next few days, particularly if they appear first on CBS News.

Senator Pat Roberts, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, responded: "I have no recollection of Senator Rockefeller objecting to the program
at the many briefings he and I attended together," Mr. Roberts said.
"In fact, it is my recollection that on many occasions Senator
Rockefeller expressed to the vice president his vocal support for the
program," most recently, "two weeks ago." Ouch. )

Further, the claims made by Democrats and the New York Times that the Bush administration somehow engaged in an "unprecedented" effort to intercept suspect communications are also somewhat less than water-tight. Matt Drudge dug into the "60 Minutes" archives and pulled a story by Steve Croft from March 2000 about the Clinton Administration's "Echelon" communications monitoring program. Byron York has a piece at National Review Online that recaps Bill Clinton's 1994 arguments for full Presidential authority to order physical searches (that is, break-ins) for the purposes of gathering foreign intelligence. Rush Limbaugh also provided more links to similar stories yesterday: The Truth and History of the NSA: NRO: Mark Levin | NewsMaxAmerican Spectator | American Thinker | 60 Minutes | SFC.

Columnist Paul Greenberg has collected an inspiring set of quotes spanning the entire course of Western civilization, simply for the purpose of showing that Howard Dean is a fool. Let's just say that he succeeded mightily.

How far the Democrats have come, from the days of John Kennedy (the man the Democrat party still wishes to clone each election cycle) to the days of losers like Dean and John Kerry. Remember JFK's inaugural promise?

"Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe
alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans,
born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter
peace, proud of our ancient heritage, and unwilling to witness or
permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has
always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and
around the world. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or
ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship,
support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the
success of liberty."— John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1961

If you look up the word "clueless" in the dictionary, you should find this recent passage by DNC Chairman Howard Dean:

"I've seen this before in my life. This is the
same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just
another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we
didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional
25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was
happening.

... I think we need a strategic redeployment
over a period of two years," Dean said. "Bring the 80,000 National
Guard and Reserve troops home immediately. They don't belong in a
conflict like this anyway. We ought to have a redeployment to
Afghanistan of 20,000 troops, we don't have enough troops to do the job
there and its a place where we are welcome. And we need a force in the
Middle East, not in Iraq but in a friendly neighboring country to fight
(terrorist leader Musab) Zarqawi, who came to Iraq after this invasion.
We've got to get the target off the backs of American troops.

... The White House wants us to
have a permanent commitment to Iraq. This is an Iraqi problem.
President Bush got rid of Saddam Hussein and that was a great thing,
but that could have been done in a very different way. But now that
we're there we need to figure out how to leave. 80% of Iraqis want us
to leave, and it's their country."

Rush Limbaugh provided this transcript:

STAN KELLY (WOIA): Governor Dean, the key to I guess
eventually getting the US forces out of Iraq is going to have the
Iraqis do a better job defending themselves and taking a greater goal.
Are we on the right track to achieve that goal?

HOWARD DEAN: Let's not forget. This is ultimately what America had to
do in Vietnam [sic]. Ultimately they said we're going to turn this over
to the Vietnamese and of course the South Vietnamese couldn't manage to
take care of their own country. I wish the president had paid more
attention to the history of Iraq before we'd gotten in there. The idea
that we're going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just
plain wrong and I've seen this before in my life, and it cost
us 25,000 [sic--58,000] brave American soldiers in Vietnam, and I don't
want to go down that road again. Get out of there and take the targets
off our troops' back[s].

There is so much wrong with this, on so many levels, that it is hard to know where to begin. But the important thing to take away from this is the simple fact that Howard Dean is pandering to hard-left anti-military, anti-American, anti-war Democrats. He is, quite frankly, attempting to turn the party toward a relatively small number of kooks in order to appease them and save their votes. These burned out 60's leftovers aren't mature or educated enough to understand anything beyond "Vietnam," and if Dean is attempting to articulate official Democrat party policy when he outlines such a defeatist and revisionist military "strategy," then he has just lost the next election for their party.

The tired canards about "protecting our troops" and "restoring their morale" are just a bunch of nonsense, a smokescreen to soften the anti-war message so that it doesn't alienate the majority of Americans. As recent polling shows, these constant attacks on the administration and constant predictions of military defeat by Democrats have already alienated voters and have resulted in a demonstrably negative effect on troop morale. But damaging President Bush politically has long been a far greater priority for Democrats than defeating Al Qaeda or tangibly supporting our troops.

Again, thank you Howard Dean for making this fact crystal clear.______________________________________________________

RELATED: Criticism of the US Military is not a taboo or forbidden subject; we have the right to ask questions when we think that things could have been done better. Blogger Wunderkraut points out that many people were angry after the US invasion of Tarawa in Nov. 1943 that resulted in over 3,000 US casualties (mostly Marines) because official reports sited poor intelligence and poor planning of the invasion. But no one called for the impeachment of President Roosevelt, or the resignation of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, or the court marshall of Navy admirals, or for America to surrender to Japan and sign a peace treaty. In fact, the New York Times closed its editorial with a sobering reminder that the US would likely suffer similar casualties as we continually occupied Japanese strongholds, and that "we should steel ourselves now to pay that price."